Relatively Dangerous (16 page)

She said, with cold fury: ‘He was Steven Thompson.’

He stared at her, slack-jawed. ‘But you said . . .’

‘Will you stop saying the same thing over and over again. The English police made a mistake in identification.’

‘But . . . but dammit, you must have discovered that he wasn’t really dead?’ Only after he’d finished speaking did he realize the implications of what he’d just said.

The maid, wheeling a cocktail trolley, came out on to the patio. She positioned it close to Muriel’s chair and checked that the brake was on. ‘Is some crisps, señora. ‘And . . .’

‘That’s all.’

The maid returned into the house.

‘I want a whisky,’ Muriel said.

Wheeldon stood, opened the two top flaps of the trolley and these, through a system of counterweights, brought up a shelf on which were several bottles, an insulated ice container, and half a dozen glasses. He poured out a whisky on the rocks and passed her the glass. He looked at Alvarez. ‘He doesn’t want anything,’ Muriel said. Innate courtesy made him ask Alvarez: ‘Are you quite certain you won’t have something?’

‘Thank you, I’d like a coñac, please, with ice but no soda.’

She became still angrier.

Wheeldon poured himself a pink gin, sat.

‘Señor,’ said Alvarez, ‘did you meet Señor Thompson, or Taylor, when he was on this island?’

Wheeldon cleared his throat. ‘As a matter of fact, I did, yes.’

‘Where did this happen?’

‘At some party or other; I can’t remember exactly which.’

‘And when was this?’

‘The first time? I suppose it was three or four months ago.’

‘You’ve seen him since then?’

‘I . . . Well, as a matter of fact, I have, yes.’

‘You saw him again?’ she said sharply.

‘Look, I’d no idea he was your husband. You never said anything.’

‘Of course I damn well didn’t.’

‘But why not?’

‘God Almighty, that has to be the year’s stupidest question.’

‘Señor,’ said Alvarez, ‘did you buy shares from him?’

She said, her voice filled with scorn: ‘Not even Archie could be that soft.’

Wheeldon spoke uneasily. ‘I . . . The thing is . . .’

‘Christ! You’re not trying to say you actually did?’

‘He made it sound so promising.’

‘Of course he did. And you believed him? It’s a wonder he didn’t sell you a slice of moon cheese at the same time.’

‘I’m not quite as thick as you seem to think.’

‘Impossible.’

‘I doubled my money.’

She laughed scornfully.

‘I’m telling you, I literally doubled my money. What’s more, if you like I can prove it.’ He stood, crossed to the cocktail trolley and poured himself a second pink gin.

‘How much did you pay for the shares, señor?’ Alvarez asked.

‘It was the equivalent of five cents, Australian,’ he answered, as he sat.

‘How many did you buy?’

‘Two hundred thousand.’

‘And what did you sell them for?’

‘Ten cents clear.’

‘You made ten thousand Australian dollars?’ she said, her voice high from astonishment.

‘Yes, I did.’

‘Señor,’ said Alvarez, ‘how much would your holding be worth now?’

Wheeldon picked up his glass and drank quickly.

Muriel looked at Alvarez, then at Wheeldon. ‘How much, Archie?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What’s the name of the shares?’

‘I’ve forgotten.’

‘Yabra Consolidated,’ said Alvarez.

‘What? You bought Yabra Consolidated at five cents?’

‘Yes.’

‘And then sold them at ten? When they’re now worth over five dollars?’

‘How was I to know . . .?’

‘D’you realize how much you’ve lost?’

‘I haven’t lost anything. I told you, I’ve doubled my money.’

‘Christ! you’ve got a mind that walks one inch high. Your holding’s now worth a million dollars. But you sold it for ten thousand. You gave him practically a million!’

‘I didn’t give him anything. He bought them from me . . .’

‘You call it buying, when he knew they were worth fifty times what he was paying for them?’

‘Maybe he didn’t.’

‘You can really think he’d offer you a profit if he didn’t know they were worth five dollars? My late husband may have been many things, but he was nobody’s fool. He’d sized you up as God’s gift to a con-man from the moment he first met you. Don’t you have the wit to understand anything? When you bought those shares at five cents, they wouldn’t have been worth half that. Then they shot up and he must have been absolutely shocked to discover that for once in his worthless life he’d sold something that was increasing in value. So what did he do? Rushed out here to offer you twice as much as you’d paid, quite certain you’d jump at the chance of a hundred per cent profit and never have the nous to stand back and wonder why a man like him should willingly let you make money. You were so blind greedy, you threw a million dollars down the bloody drain.’

He was so angrily humiliated that he answered back. ‘And were you so very clever? What did you call me when I suggested you bought some of the shares? So naive I thought Carey Street was a good address? The shares were worthless and always would be? So how much did you throw down the bloody drain? You could have bought a million shares and they’d be worth fifty million dollars now. So you’ve lost fifty million compared to my million. So who’s the bigger fool?’

‘How . . . how can you be so cruel and vicious?’

He was immediately contrite. ‘I’m terribly sorry, Muriel, old girl. I was upset and didn’t realize what I was saying . . .’

Only a complete idiot, thought Alvarez, would have apologized after forcing her on the defensive.

‘If I had bought them,’ she said sharply, determined to salvage her pride, ‘I’d have known a damn sight better than to sell them back to him before I’d checked out why he wanted to buy.’

‘I . . . I suppose you would.’ Wheeldon stared down at his glass.

Alvarez said: ‘Señor, when did you next meet Señor Taylor?’

‘It was about three weeks ago.’

‘Why did he come and see you this time? Was it still in connection with the Yabra Consolidated shares?’

‘I don’t remember.’ He went over to the cocktail cabinet and poured himself a third pink gin.

She said: ‘You must remember.’ Her tone was sharp and clearly his earlier remarks had really hurt and now she was determined to gain revenge for his presumption. ‘So if you don’t want to talk about it, it must be embarrassing. I wonder what Steven said on his last visit that could so disturb you?’ She paused, as if thinking. ‘It surely can’t be . . .?’

He looked appealingly at her.

‘You know, Steven was always ridiculously proud of his ability to talk people into behaving like fools and the greater the challenge, the prouder he felt . . . Which means, of course, that originally he couldn’t gain much satisfaction out of conning you.’

‘Muriel, old girl . . .’

‘I think he returned because he knew that by then you would have discovered how he’d conned you out of a fortune and you’d be sick with anger. Now, to sell more shares to someone in that state would really be a challenge. Right?’

‘I was only trying . . .’

‘Your motto—always trying? What went on in your mind? Did you manage to see yourself as a financier, making and destroying financial empires with a brief nod of the head?’

‘Why won’t you understand?’

‘But I do, perfectly. I understand you just as thoroughly as I understood my late, but unlamented, husband.’

‘Señor,’ said Alvarez, ‘did you buy some more shares from him?’

He looked at Alvarez with astonishment, as if he had forgotten the detective was also present.

‘Well, did you?’ she said mockingly.

‘He . . . he said it was a red-hot tip which he was telling me about because in the circumstances he wanted to help me. Don’t you see how I . . .’

‘Help? What genius, to use that word after he’d swindled you out of a million dollars! But I don’t suppose that even now you’ve appreciated the full irony of it . . . How much did he take you for this time?’

‘I invested five hundred pounds.’

‘Invested. How words change their meanings . . . And you handed it over without a whimper; the sacrificial lamb, running to its slaughter. He must have laughed himself nearly sick.’

Alvarez knew pity, but also contempt, for Wheeldon; no man should allow himself to be the butt of such vicious contempt at the hands of a woman, however much he loved her. He stood.

She looked up. ‘Are you leaving? You’re probably right. It looks as if the entertainment’s over for the day.’

Cala del Dia—which in this context could loosely be translated as ‘beach for the daytime—’ was now the name given to a large area which included the urbanizacion and the complex of shops, cafes, and restaurants which served it, but originally it had pertained only to a very narrow strip of land which ran along the edge of a cliff. The name adumbrated Mallorquin humour; there was no beach, since the cliff plunged into the sea, and at night time, lacking any form of guard, it had been all too easy for a walker to tumble over the edge, especially on a fiesta.

Alvarez reached the foot of the urbanizacion and began the steep, zigzagging drive upwards. It was odd, he mused, how much the foreigners were prepared to pay for a view. To build on a slope cost up to fifty per cent more than on the level, especially if one demanded a large patio with pool. Yet all over the island there were developments along the lower slopes of hills and mountains. He modified his thoughts. He should be applauding his countrymen’s business acumen rather than wondering at the gullibility of the foreigners. After all, such rocky slopes were otherwise valueless.

The road ended at Casa Resta, which stood on a fold of the mountain and therefore had views both to the east and the south; because of the steepness of the slope at this point, the outside of the foundations had had to be built up several metres. It was a large house, with a typically formless jumble of different roof levels; not much artistic talent would have been needed to make it far more visually appealing.

He rang the front-door bell. Rosa opened the door and told him that the señor was down in the village, but would almost certainly be coming back soon—did he want to wait? She took him through the house to the patio. ‘Feel like some coffee?’

‘Mallorquin style?’

‘What d’you think?’

As she went inside, he walked to the edge of the patio, just beyond the end of the swimming pool. At Ca’n Grande, one had the illusion of floating above the sea, here, the many houses in the urbanization below precluded any such fanciful thoughts; Ca’n Grande said there could be beauty in wealth, Casa Resta, only vulgarity.

Rosa returned to the patio with a tray on which were two cups of coffee, milk, sugar, and one balloon glass well filled with brandy. She set everything out on the patio table, sat. ‘You can always hear him coming back.’

‘He’s the kind of man who wouldn’t like to find you here?’

‘Sometimes he’d laugh, sometimes he’d shout his head off. You just can’t tell where you are with him. But he’s a foreigner, so what d’you expect? Have anything to do with them?’

‘Too much. I live in Llueso and sometimes I think half the population’s foreign.’

‘You’re from Llueso? Then maybe you know my cousin from Playa Nueva?’ She said that her cousin was a very cunning man who had made a fortune building houses on what had been a swamp. Almost all the houses were damp and the buyers were forever complaining. Wasn’t it incredible that anyone could be so stupid as not to know that a house built on a swamp was going to be damp?

Alvarez returned the conversation to Reading-Smith. What kind of a man was he? A strange man. One minute he’d be friendly, the next he’d kick up hell. And if something refused to work, like the washing-machine or the toaster . . . She wondered if it was when he feared he was being made a fool of. But to think that of a machine! . . . There was, of course, something else which raised his temper. When he was getting fed up with whichever woman was living in the house. If he started shouting that the house was filthy and the housekeeping bills ridiculous, she knew that the current woman was on the way out. She often thought about the women. Had they no shame? Just because the señor was rich beyond the dreams of ordinary people, was that a reason for any woman to sell herself? But then, they were always foreigners. Mostly English. But there had been that Frenchwoman who’d walked around the house naked. Not naked in a bathing costume; naked naked . . .

They heard the growl of an approaching high-powered car, its engine note rising and falling as it took the sharp bends.

‘That’s him.’ She collected everything up.

‘What’s his woman situation at the moment?’

‘A new one who’ll be around for a while yet.’ She picked up the tray. ‘I remember our priest warning us that a special part of hell is reserved for fornicators. His place must have been booked a long time back.’

Soon after Rosa had returned into the house, Reading-Smith walked out on to the patio. There was no mistaking his essential toughness. It was in the cragginess of his face, the set of his mouth, the way he shook hands, and the tone of voice which made every statement a challenge.

‘You’re the police?’

‘Yes, señor.’

‘What d’you want?’

‘To ask some questions concerning Señor Thompson.’

‘Why?’

‘I am investigating his death.’

‘Does that mean it wasn’t an accident?’

‘Probably not.’

‘I can’t help you.’

‘I think that perhaps you may be able to.’

Reading-Smith hesitated a moment, as if deliberating whether to throw Alvarez out, then said: ‘It’s like a bloody oven out here. We’ll go inside.’

The sitting-room was air-conditioned and initially struck cold. Reading-Smith went over to an armchair, sat, hooked one leg over an arm. ‘All right, let’s hear how in the hell I’m supposed to be able to help.’

‘Did you know that the señor’s name was really Steven Taylor and his wife, Señora Muriel Taylor, lives in El Granero?’

‘He was the husband of that stupid bitch? . . . Hang on. Her husband died years ago, back in England.’